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THE VIEW FROM HERE - About 85% of Americans are Centrists, leaving about 15% as either right wing or left-wing extremists. Nonetheless, the extremists control the GOP and the Dem parties. Despite Trump’s mental instability and his authoritarian pronouncements, the Left Woke DEI extremists constitute the greater danger to the nation.
The Alt Right is far more prone to violence due to their having more paranoid individuals on the extreme right. Timothy McVeigh, Eric Rudolph, and David Koresh did not represent a coordinated political movement. The far right is littered with neo-Nazis, who are primarily mentally ill losers, anti-abortion murderers, and Sovereign Citizen types who believe that Liberty means that they can do whatever they want and everyone else has no rights. Every once in a while, some lunatic group springs up such as the Jewish Defense League (JDL) in the 1970's. These far-right extremists share one thing – they are law enforcement matters. Until recently, they were not part of a bone fide political movement.
The modus operandi for private organizations such as the NAACP, The American Jewish Committee, the ADL, and the Southern Poverty Law Center was twofold: (1) promote tolerance in order to the reduce the number of people who would fall for the extremist group rights ideologies, and (2) gather data on criminal behavior and cooperate with law enforcement so that the extremists were criminally prosecuted. Within the Jewish community, for example, the work of various agencies like the AJC, the ADL and Jewish Federation Councils made the environment for the likes of the racist Mier Kahane so welcoming, that he and his followers moved the Israel, and leaders of the JDL ended up in prison. After the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, VA, in 2017, with its Tiki Torch Marchers chanting “Jews shall not replace us ” and the murder of Heather Heyer, law enforcement spent years prosecuting the criminals and significantly dismantling cohesiveness between the various groups. As had been the practice since the 1960's, the violence of the Alt Right was a law enforcement matter .... until the far-left Identity Politics, Wokeism, and Diversity, Equity and Inclusive (DEI) came along.
Although Nancy Pelosi was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1987, she did not become a powerhouse until she became Leader of the House Democratic Caucus (2003 to 2023). Her goal was to make the Dem Party the sole party and to vanquish the GOP. Her plan, called Identity Politics, was to gather all the various minorities into the Dem Party so that when the minorities became the majority of the voters, the minorities would replace The Whites. Although it was the French racist, Renaud Camus, who published his book Le Grand Remplacement in 2011 that Muslim immigrants would replace White Europeans, Pelosi’s plan to have American minorities pre-dated his book. Nonetheless, Camus’ book was the proverbial gasoline on the fire which Pelosi was trying to ignite within the American Alt Right.
Pelosi’s plan was transparent – the more she existentially threatened the Alt Right, the more violent they would become. Law enforcement advised Pelosi that her Identity Politics and her threat to replace Whites with minorities was dangerous and risked making the Alt Right into a political movement. Such admonitions, however, did not deter Pelosi’s Identity Politics since she believed that more Alt Right violence would alienate Americans from the right, i.e., GOP.
We will never know whether Pelosi’s Identity Politics would have become today’s racist anti-Jewish, anti-Semitic Woke DEI without the emergence of Donald Trump in 2016, calling Mexicans “drug dealers, criminals, rapists” as he descended the elevator at Trump Towers. After the Dem Party had abandoned poor and lower class Whites during the Obama years, their suffering had no champion. As the Wall Street Party, the GOP held nothing for them and the Dem Party was promising to replace them with minorities. With the shipping of their jobs overseas, poor and blue collar Whites were hostile to immigrant, low wage workers. While they could do nothing about the Chinese laborers, they could attack Mexican immigrants whom they saw as taking what few jobs that were left. In case anyone had missed the point that the Dems had become anti-White, Hillary Clinton made the situation clear when she called Whites in the Rust Belt swing states, “a basket of Deplorables.” (Deplorables is the N-word applied to Whites). Dem Identity Politics had done what law enforcement had predicted – it turned the Alt Right into a political movement and made a madman president.
Rather than admitting the danger of Nancy Pelosi’s polarizing Identity Politics, the Dems doubled, tripled, and quadrupled down so that Identity Politics morphed into the anti-white and anti-Jewish DEI Wokeism. There is a curious sociological phenomenon that when a cult has been proven totally wrong, it does not disband but instead it becomes more committed to its cause Rather than admit the disaster of the 2016 election loss due to its White bashing, the Dems went whole hog forward with DEI, especially on college campuses.
Donald Trump Is Seriously Mentally Ill
Due to the Goldwater Doctrine which forbids psychiatrists from offering opinions on the mental state of people whom they have not treated, anyone who attempted to bring to the public’s attention that Donald Trump suffered from mental disorders risked losing their license and/or heavy public attack. On the other hand, the laws of confidentiality would prevent any psychiatrist who had treated Trump from offering an opinion on his mental condition. As one realizes in retrospect, the Goldwater Doctrine is a form of prior censorship of vital information. Free speech is subject to abuse, but censorship is the wrong solution.
While most mental disorders cannot be diagnosed from afar, there are exceptions. Some Personality Disorders are exceptions when the person repeatedly exhibits his diagnostic features in public. Donald Trump’s disorders were easy to diagnose from a distance as he was such a public blabbermouth that he constantly displayed all his diagnostic features and had done so for years. Using the DSM-5, Trump may be classified at a narcissistic Histrionic with paranoid features. (Since I am not licensed psychiatrist or psychologist, let them try to take away my license.)
Histrionic Personality Disorder is less common but more dangerous than more well known Narcissistic Personality Disorder in a public figure since Histrionics are impulsive and emote rather than reason. They crave the cheers of the crowd more than anything else, and we all see how Trump basks in the glow of crowd when he says the most absurd things. Like other Histrionics, Trump has learned how to repeat what the crowd wants to hear. It’s a talent like being an opera singer, but talent alone is not enough. It has to be perfected and Trump has had decades to intuitively feel what the crowd wants and to give it to them in spades. After the grand betrayal of the Dems during the Obama years and Pelosi’s existential threats to replace the Whites with minorities, White America craved anyone who would shout their anger from the roof tops. Trump became the Piped Piper of the disaffected Whites.
Trump Was the Wrong Man at the Wrong Time with the Wrong Talent
Some people like to compare Trump to Hitler, and there is a similarity. After WW I, the Germans were extremely angry at the onerous provisions of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, and were primed to follow anyone who promised to make Germany great again. While one could opine that the suffering of the poor and blue class Whites in the Rust Belt was not 1/10th of what the Germans suffered after WW I, arguing with people about how they feel is a fools’ game. Hillary’s calling White voters “Deplorables” should go down as single dumbest utterance in political history.
Thanks to Pelosi’s Identity Politics which has become the racist anti-White, anti-Jewish Wokeism, the Alt Right MAGA is an unstoppable political movement. The Dems are so deluded in their own virtue that they cannot understand why Trump’s support keeps growing with each indictment. Now that the Woke Dems’ anti-Semitism and their alignment with the Hamas terrorists and Hamas’ goal to exterminate the Jews is on public display, their cries that Trump is a fascist are ludicrous. Trump is the President who was bringing peace to the Middle East with the Abraham Accords, while Biden’s and the Woke support for Iran has resulted in the worse pogrom since the Holocaust. Trump, however, is exhibiting Narcissistic Rages over Zelenskyy’s not helping him in 2016 and over Trump’s loss of the 2020 election. It appears that Trump’s Narcissistic Disorder is upstaging his Histrionic Disorder. Americans in general and GOP do not like losing wars and Trump’s anti-Zelenskyy’s hizzy fit is causing us to lose in Ukraine.
And Where Is the Center?
The 85% of us in the Center reject both MAGA and Wokeism. Nonetheless, these lunatic extremes are calling all the shots. Between Trumpism and Wokeism, the second is the far more lethal. The Woke refusal to allow Kevin McCarthy be a Centrist Speaker of the House may be America’s Rubicon – the act which sealed our doom. The Woke insisted that all Dems stab McCarthy in the back and not support him for Speaker right after he had saved the nation from a financial shut down and thereby had made himself a pariah among the MAGA. Again, it’s the Woke Pelosi theory that the worst the GOP behave the more likely Americans will vote Dem. Thus, they let the MAGA control the House.
With McCarthy as speaker, however, his political survival rested on a Centrist coalition of GOP and Dems. That means the Center would close out both the MAGA and the Wokers, allowing America to adopt reasonable policies: (1) Strong support for Ukraine, (2) Strong support for Israel and condemnation of Hamas and its allies such as the UN and Iran, and (3) reasonable immigration policies for the southern border.
Wokers have driven a stake into the heart of the Republic, making the nation stagnant in a sea of peril. There is but one hope for us Centrists – to pry Biden away from the Wokers. If Biden rejects Wokeism and champions Centrist America where each person is judged by his own character and not by the color of his skin, Biden may be able to prevail in 2024 or maybe not. That was George Washington’s risk when he crossed the Delaware River.
(Richard Lee Abrams has been an attorney, a Realtor and community relations consultant as well as a CityWatch contributor. The view expressed by Mr. Abrams are his alone and not necessarily those of CityWatchLA. You may email him at [email protected])
